17. Luna
LUNA
His voice holds neither humor nor contempt. Instead: desperation. Fake or not, it strikes me in the chest.
“Don’t leave.”
I turn to face him and search for a lie in his expression. Pray for a lie in his expression. But there’s no lie—yet. His eyes dart as he searches for words, for the right words.
He’ll find them. Somehow, I know he will.
My shoulders quiver as air ghosts up my neck. But like an idiot, I stay. I trudge toward Sawyer, heavy feet dragging on splintered hardwood, body and brain at odds once again.
Pulling my sweater off my head, I drop my clothes to the floor and climb into bed next to him.
It feels wrong. Personal and forced and sick, somehow. But as I pull the blanket over us and lay my head on his stretched shoulder, warmth settles in my belly.
A minute passes before I find the courage to run my fingers over his chest, tracing a familiar scar.
I follow his sternum to the shell necklace, but of course, it isn’t there. At the mines, it’d be considered contraband. If the Keepers didn’t take it, a fellow Dreg would have, breaking the shell to use the sharp edge as a meager weapon.
I frown while fingering the spot it once rested.
“You’re smart for being quiet,” I say, voice low.
“You know I like this. You think if you give me what I want now, you’ll be able to influence me tomorrow before the execution.
” I trail his collarbone. “And you’ve earned that confidence.
You’re incredible at saying the right things and doing the right things and being the right things for almost anyone. ”
Myself included.
“But…” I inhale deeply, my palm resting on his pec. “I’m not as clueless as your ordinary mark. I can sense when you’re playing me, and you’re always playing me.”
Silence overtakes us for a painful moment while I try not to regret my words. Stupid, showing my hand like this. He’ll try harder to hide his lies now, up his game even more.
I’m foolish to hope that he won’t.
“But you don’t want me to…”
“No.” I close my eyes as I sidle closer to him. My nose and cheek press against vanilla-scented skin.
“You want to trust me.”
“Yes.”
More silence. I slide down his abs and nudge myself into him, glad he can’t hold me. It’d only feel like placation.
“Tell me how to make that happen.”
When he speaks, he whispers. He sounds genuine. Vulnerable. Honest.
My guard lowers none.
“Tell me something real,” I whisper back.
I consider elaborating but don’t.
What would I even want to know?
His devious plans? The tools he’s using to trick me?
Laughable. It would take torture to extract that from him … and I don’t want to torture Sawyer. I don’t even want to hurt him.
We can be enemies. We can have secrets.
But tonight, in this bed, it would be nice to have something. Some resemblance to a white flag.
“You first.”
I peer up at him. Blue waves of his irises lull me until my shoulders relax. I don’t see deceit or malice or anything else along those lines.
He turns his head more toward me. “When our roles were reversed, I told you a great deal about myself. Real stuff… Everything you told me was a lie.”
I shake my head. “Not everything.”
I told him more than I ever planned to. More than I ever should have.
“The point is, I can’t trust you either, Luna. If I can’t trust you, I can’t be trustworthy… I’ll tell you something real. But you have to go first.”
Letting out a sigh, I lower my eyes. I trace the valley between two ribs, my nail drawing a fading line to his side. If it were me, I’d shiver… Sawyer doesn’t flinch.
His point is fair.
I lied about who I was. I gave him every reason not to trust me.
How can I demand his loyalty and respect given the circumstances? What right do I have to be offended by his attempts at manipulation—especially considering my own success?
As inaccurate as it feels, I’ve objectively been the victor of manipulation thus far. Even now, he’s playing nice to avoid an execution that was never going to happen. I rode his tongue because I knew he was desperate enough to let me.
Who is the real monster here?
“A truth for a truth… Yes?” I ask.
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No time for thought.
He’s going to lie.
It isn’t until I open my mouth that I realize I plan to do the same. My nail pauses midway up a rib while I let the words freeze to my tongue.
If I know he’ll lie…
And he knows I’ll lie…
What is the point?
My eyes close as I release a breath. I lay my hand flat on Sawyer’s chest and speak the first truth that comes to my mind.
“My name isn’t Luna.”
I don’t know why I expect the air to feel different, but for a moment, I lay surprised. Breaths move freely through my lungs.
“It isn’t the name I was born with,” I clarify. “Thorne gave me that name when we met. But my birth name is Daemonium. It’s Latin for—”
“Demon,” Sawyer finishes for me, his voice low. But not pitiful.
I close my eyes and breathe through the heat that blasts my face. Fire spreads from the tip of my nose to the curve of my ears, but if I erupt into flames, Sawyer doesn’t mention them. For a solid minute, he says nothing.
“Did they really believe you were a demon?” he asks cautiously. Though he must know the answer.
I don’t confirm it.
It’s worse than whatever he’s imagining. My people were horrified at my birth—a being with white skin and devil eyes, not just defective but paranormal.
If it weren’t for my father caring for his flesh and blood, they would’ve stoned me along with my mother. Then threw my bloodied limbs into a fire to send me back to hell.
My father protected me under the condition that I stay away from the people. For twelve years, I watched them through my bedroom window, the natural lines in my fingertips sanded down from constantly brushing glass.
Never could I have imagined I would one day join them. But Thorne is both painfully beloved and charmingly honest, with a voice people listened to. Long before they started listening to me.
I owe my breath to my father. But my life to Thorne.
Flinch.
As warm as Sawyer’s chest feels, this bed is not where I belong.
“Zephyr referred to you by your birth name,” Sawyer says, knife to the heart. “So I knew that already… But thank you for telling the truth.”
Teeth sink into my bottom lip. Silence bathes us while I pretend his comment doesn’t make me even more vulnerable. More stupid.
It’s his turn.
But I can’t help myself.
“Not everything she told you about me was true.”
No response.
“I’ve never hurt one of Thorne’s lovers.”
“Except Zephyr,” Sawyer says. Even he was aware of their affair.
My face burns hot.
“I found out they were sleeping together a year before her death… I didn’t kill her for sleeping with Thorne. Or for sleeping with you.” My throat pangs. “She made a choice to betray the Shadow Sanctum. That doesn’t come without a cost.”
More silence… It’s worse than if he argued. More effective than if he’d pressed.
“That wasn’t the first time she’d attempted sabotage,” I say, as if his understanding matters.
But it does…
Sawyer is the only person who even knows about Zephyr. No one else questioned her death. There’s no one to judge me but him.
“She volunteered to take my place with you. I’m certain she would’ve told you everything. Made one big joke for the two of you to laugh at behind my back.”
“She sounds like a shitty sister.”
“She…”
The word comes quick, but as soon as it’s out of my mouth it’s impossible to finish the sentence.
She was.
But… she wasn’t.
My chest aches at the images that play in my mind, two girls with a doll—hers. She brought it on her weekly visit, and I marveled at the clumsy stitching, gushed as I brushed coarse dark hair stolen from a horse's tail. I teared up when she told me I could have it.
The next week my Father filled my room with dolls—shiny silk hair, porcelain skin, purchased online. When I gave one to Zephyr, he beat her twice as hard.
She deserved better… And she deserved to hate me for it.
“She was sad,” I finally finish past the gunk in my throat.
This time, I’m grateful when Sawyer doesn’t respond or ask me to elaborate. We lay in the silence, the air thick with sex and naked truth. My truth.
I swallow. Close my eyes. Tap my nail against a rib. “Your turn.”
“My turn,” Sawyer parrots. A breath blows past his lips while he searches his mind. For a truth. For a lie. I don’t know.
“It’s not as good as yours.” I feel his head turn but don’t open my eyes.
“Then find one better.”
“You have one better,” he counters like he was waiting for it.
My molars grind—subtle, gentle, not angry. My thoughts take me back to the training house, to the very last words he spoke before my time as a captive was officially up.
His mother. He told me about his mother.
“Fine.” Eyelids fluttering open, I drag myself off of him and lie flat on my back. Seven cracks in the popcorn ceiling, all counted before Sawyer speaks.
“I cried the first time I watched Pinocchio.”
Pinocchio. Like the children’s book…
I suppress a scoff.
How revealing.
“Afraid your nose would grow?”
He laughs—barely. Maybe it’s a cough. “Something like that… No, mostly I found it unbearably confusing. Mrs. Carter kept saying over and over ‘see what happens to boys who tell the truth?’. It all just seemed very backwards. Like…” Long pause.
“I don’t know. But my pillow was soaking wet the next morning. ”
“Poor baby,” I mock, though I can’t help but see what he’s saying.
A memory plays, almost forgotten.
Sitting on my father’s lap, a children’s book in his hands. After closing it, he pressed it to my chest and asked the same question he always asked after finishing a story.
What does it mean?
Simple answer, however meaningless: bad things happen when you lie. Good things happen when you tell the truth.
Good girl, he whispered in my ear.
I smiled. And as soon as he was gone, I tucked the book on the bottom of a stack, never to be seen again.
“I suppose this happened in college?” I joke. Because why not? If we’re going to talk nonsense, we might as well paint a picture.
“Kindergarten.”
Hurray. Details.
My hands clasp over my belly, thumbs tapping while I look at the door.
“Riveting. I imagine the other boys bullied you tearless.”
“Other boys?” he asks. I open my mouth, but the confusion in his voice makes me pause.
Confusion is not useful for deceit.
“In the classroom. I assume Mrs. Carver was your teacher?” I ask, my head tilting slightly toward him.
“Mrs. Carter,” he corrects. Successfully.
Nothing follows.
I wait, thumbs drumming my gut—slow, fast, slow. My gaze stays fixed on the ceiling as I focus on my breath.
I could’ve told him about the time I broke my arm falling from a tree.
Sitting up, I let my hair veil my chest, chin dipped low while I inspect a bruise on my knee. I’m just about to leave when Sawyer’s voice startles me.
“She was my foster mother.”
I pause my prodding on the bruise and turn my head halfway. Not quite looking at him.
A question hangs in the room. It tightens the air between us until every movement is met with a tug. It shouldn’t have to be asked, but when a minute passes, it’s clear that Sawyer has no intention of supplying the answer.
“Why?” I ask. Another beat passes. I consider extending the question, but not a word was necessary.
Finally, I turn to Sawyer. Bruised and tied and pitiful, yet somehow looking as though he could lead a room. Like a fool, I lean in and practically announce that I’m hanging onto every word. Powerful are those who hold the secrets.
He sighs. Closes his eyes. Carefully considers something.
When he looks at me, I hold my breath. Blue eyes shine with earnestness that’s so rare, I barely recognize it.
Instead of answering, he rolls his head and looks pointedly at the crook of his arm. Through a squint, I make out a faint white line, the scar tissue hardly raised.
The mattress shifts beneath my weight as I crawl forward and slip the tip of my finger down the scar. Too small to be a break, too precise to be an accident.
Sawyer watches while I think, my finger gliding back and forth.
An intentional cut in the crook of the arm…
Why?
Too bizarre to be abuse.
Too…
The line is thin and straight. Cut with a blade for certain, but an exact blade.
A scalpel.
“Was it surgical?” I ask, though it makes little sense. Until I stop assuming it was done by the father.
Oh.
A faint recollection of a story comes into my mind. A mother slicing open her baby’s belly, convinced she’d swallowed a scorpion. Post Partum psychosis, the article referred to it.
“Was she removing something?” I ask with a voice so soft, it doesn’t sound like mine.
A microchip. An insect.
I wait. Sawyer neither confirms nor denies, which is as much as anyone could ask. More than I ever thought he’d give.
He told someone, didn’t he?
On accident.
Probably for the last time.
Sawyer’s arm moves with a twisting motion that dissolves my thoughts.
“I’m tired,” Sawyer says as I meet his eyes. “Do you think we could talk again in the morning?”
In the morning…
I nearly laugh the tension from my back, nearly dislodge the sickly feeling in my gut that only comes from knowing that you’ve said too much. Revealed what can never be forgotten.
I’ll be shocked if we so much as look at each other tomorrow.
But… He’s thinking of Liberty again, isn’t he?
My eyes dip to the bedspread as I tuck hair behind my ears.
I grab my clothes off the floor and get dressed, grateful for the silence. Once I’m fully clothed, I sit facing away from him. My spine lengthens as I stare at the bare, white wall.
“You should know, Thorne is taking over my position as your handler. I’m going to be far too busy with other work to deal with this breeding issue, so all of your progress and concerns should be reported to him… Do yourself a favor and avoid provoking him. I can’t help you if you do.”
“What about Liberty?” Sawyer doesn’t hide his unease. I can’t tell if I like that he’s no longer hiding it or if I resent it. Because he really did expect an orgasm and some truth telling to make me bend my will. He really does believe it’s that easy.
Maybe it is. Maybe it’s even easier than that because I know I should kill Liberty, and I’ve yet to seriously consider it.
“Fortunately for Liberty, Thorne is more patient than I am. He’s chosen to allow her one more week to adjust.”
When Sawyer doesn’t immediately respond, I straighten my shirt and stand. There’s this strange urge to kiss him goodbye that almost makes me turn around. I’m frozen in place, half-turned.
Clearing my throat, I point my feet toward the door. As I approach the entryway, I pause to flip off the light. My head turns halfway toward Sawyer.
“Good night, Dreg.”